Powdered
by AdmiralKew
Summary: Strange forces throw a down-on-his-luck young man into Remnant. He must learn how to survive in a world of bloody revolution as the keeper of Pandora's Box.
1. Chapter 1

It was 2:00 AM and I could smell the smoke from the fires in Indonesia. It sank into everything, but I couldn't close the window because it was the only one I could open in the room I had claimed for my own. The crickets sang as I typed while little tremors ran down my arms from the electric fan blowing over my sweaty hands. I could have described myself as having been struck by a mood, but my former roommate spelled it out for me in a more objective way. I was a Hiki-NEET. That was true. That I was in a flunk and couldn't find some way out of it was also true. So curled into a ball of angst and self-consciousness to let my body catch up with my already-dead soul. Reading and gaming eased the transition, so that was what I did.

I nearly stopped scrolling when the dogs started barking. Other dogs or cats? Most likely. Thieves? Probably, but they'd either have been chased off by now or I'd be hearing someone climb over or break down the crappy bamboo fence. I stopped when they started whimpering. It wasn't pain. I had heard none of them yelp. I stood up and made my way to the living room and grabbed the machete sitting on top of a cardboard box, then carefully peeked out of the window.

It was a _thing_. My mind refused to process it. It looked like an inky mass of other things that could have been eyes, arms, mouths, teeth when I look back at the memory of it. Looking at it hurt, and I felt myself fraying at the edges. It raised something towards me.

All I knew was blackness.

I woke up in a room.

My head still ached, but it wasn't as bad as looking at _it_. I decided that wondering what unfathomable goal it was achieving by rummaging around in my backyard would best be saved for later. Now would be spent checking my surroundings, and then myself.

The room was simple, with a wooden floor and molding around the floor and ceiling. The walls were clean, painted something yellowish. A set of windows let sunlight into the room. The door was wood too. There were chairs for four around a round table, and a cabinet that sat near the bed. One door could have been the bathroom, and the other could have exited into a hallway. All in all, not the worst place to wake up in.

I got myself out from under the bed covers and looked at myself. Everything seemed to be in order, but I needed a mirror to get a better idea, and then an MRI and some other internal scanning to be mostly sure. Maybe I was already broken in the head and the everything was really some sick, fleshy approximation of walls, floor, and furniture. Regardless, I had all the body parts that I could feel and see, and I checked in the cabinet mirror to see if I still had my face.

I did. I didn't like it that much, but it was at least a confirmation that I hadn't been turned into an abomination. Yet. The headache was bearable, like a light pressure pressing out from my forehead. There was a glass of water on the table, so I drank that and checked the closet. It had clothes, some of which were my clothes but most weren't. They were my size, and seemed well-made. So I put on a pair of knee-length cotton shorts and a white t-shirt. I set aside a black jacket with a snowflake embroidered on the shoulder and breast, and black jeans for when I needed to go out. There were three pairs of Converse-style shoes, one of leather dress shoes, and hiking boots of some sort as well. I sighed and promised to myself to take care of the things.

I had just sat on my bed again when my foot bumped against something, which turned out to be the machete I had brought with me. Holding it in my lap sent the gears into motion and I checked the bedside table and under the bed. Apparently, I had been supplied with fuzzy slippers, while someone or something had taken the liberty of bringing my crappy old laptop along with me.

At least I thought it was my laptop. Same make, same brand, same everything except for the fact that it lacked damage. One of the hinges hadn't been broken and hastily repaired with epoxy and duct tape. The finish wasn't worn, and the labels read clear. It booted up in a few seconds, and I browsed through the files that were there. That is to say, all of them. I shut it down again after a few minutes and laid back on the bed.

What was that thing that I saw? Why would I be brought here? Perhaps it had been a defensive mechanism, perhaps it had a purpose. Were the two even connected? Was my family alright? Thinking about the possibilities made my head ache, but I'd come to a few conclusions: First, I needed to find out why I was here. Second, I shouldn't be worrying too much about my family as I had no way to know. Third: Wherever I was, I needed to survive.

I had missed the entry of a butler. "Master Schnee wants to see you, sir." He said politely.

I gulped and nodded. Assume 'Master Schnee' is powerful. Assume he would be pissed that I had somehow ended up on his property. Best to cooperate.

I sat up and got off the bed. The name sounded familiar. _Schnee as in Schnee Dust? Probably. Need confirmation._ "Should I wear anything? Are the clothes there even mine? And is that Mr. Schnee as in Schnee Dust Company?"

"He has been generous enough to stock your wardrobe." He said. "As for attire, no. He expects you to be on your best behavior, however. And yes. He is quite curious as to the circumstances of your arrival."

The shock didn't hit me until much, much later.

"Give me a few minutes, then."


	2. Chapter 2

I was standing in front of 'Master Schnee' in the clothing I had picked out for myself and I felt very, very small. He was tall and slim, with hawkish features and slicked-back silver hair. I didn't know if that was age or dye. His eyes were a piercing icy blue. I had the feeling he was judging me.

"Please sit." He said after a long minute. "Would you like tea or coffee?"

I almost fell into one of the chairs in front of his desk. "Coffee please. Black with a tablespoon of sugar."

He nodded to the butler, who bowed and walked out of the room. It was silent again, save for the hum of the electronics built into his desk. He seemed to be waiting for me to speak.

"I have no idea how I got here." I finally said. "I was reading, then I heard the dogs barking and I went to investigate. I saw something, blacked out, and suddenly I'm here. Whether or not I was brought here remains a mystery. I don't know where I am either, and I don't know where I came from in relation to here."

He nodded. "I see."

I thanked the butler when he came back with coffee, and Mr. Schnee sent him away. I took a sip and inhaled the aroma, then sipped again before holding the coffee cup in my lap.

"Vacuo's finest." He said. "Tell me about yourself."

I sucked in a breath, and then I did. I told him about what I did, what I felt. I told him I wanted to go home, wherever that was. He didn't interrupt, and his expression had never changed but he was judging me nonetheless.

"And your name?" He said after a minute of silence.

"Carlos."

"An odd name, but you are an oddity." He said after a few minutes. "You are useless: a liability and a drain on resources. You have little skills or experience. And yet you have found yourself on my property, wearing my clothes and drinking my coffee. I have been generous, and perhaps that generosity is wasted."

I stared into my coffee and said nothing.

"You are a blank slate. Furthermore, you are a survivor. You will etch upon yourself because that is what you will do in order to survive, and you must survive in order to achieve your goals."

I blinked. That, I didn't expect. But I suppose it all boiled down to expectations. I was sitting in front of a character who had only been characterized as cold. And that he was. But it seemed that he had an understanding

"I will do what I can to see that you return home, but I want you to make yourself useful in return. Nothing is free, after all." He paused, then looked behind me. "Winter, please show our guest around the house. I have work to do."

I turned to look at the tall young woman who moved in from the doorway. She had been standing in there for who knew how long. She had the presence of a glacier, but certainly did not move like one. Her motions were graceful, if measured and precise. Military perhaps? Her clothes did pull off that kind of impression.

"Yes, Father." She bowed, then turned to me. "This way, please."

I finished my coffee and stood up. I thanked Mr. Schnee for the time and followed Winter out of his office.

"One last thing." He said as I exited. "Congratulations on the recovery."

I turned to Winter after she closed the door. "Recovery?"

Winter looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "You don't know? You were out for a week!"

"Oh, huh." Then something clicked. "Why didn't I wake up in a hospital, then?"

"Father thought it would be better if you were kept as much of a secret as possible."

"Why?" I asked, though I already knew some of the reasons.

"Well, there's the White Fang." She said with a sneer, though it wasn't directed at me. "They strike at our assets, and they will see you as one whether you want to or not."

Her expression loosened. "And there's also the media circus. And we wouldn't want that."

"That too." I shook my head. "I attended a workers' rights rally once."

She looked at me again. "Oh?"

"Yeah. They had free food." I shrugged.

"Ah."

"Anyway, I got ambushed by a bunch of reporters who wanted my opinion and all that. Wouldn't leave until I told them some crap about a cause. It wasn't long after that some people tried to recruit me into the Communist Party. I told them no."

"What's that?"

I hummed. "I'll explain in detail later, but they're similar to the White Fang. Except that they're human."

Speaking of which. I don't think I've explained how I came from _elsewhere_ , and how I knew things. They probably figured that I'm some sort of. That would have to come up later. I didn't know when I should explain, though.

"Ah." Winter was thinking. She seemed to be less constrained around her father, but I had only known her for a few minutes at this point. "Anyway! Here's the dining room."

We entered a large dining hall. The floor was marble and the walls had wood paneling, and were lined with paintings and sculptures. Massive crystal chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling and provided warm lighting. It was something out of the Victorian era.

"Go ahead and look around." She said with a gentle push on my back. "I'm going to go get something from the kitchen."

I walked over to the paintings and sculptures. The older ones were probably of Winter's grandparents by the look of it. They didn't seem as severe as Mr. Schnee and his daughters were. They looked rather pleasant, in fact. Further down was a painting of a younger Mr. Schnee and a woman who looked to be around the same age. They were smiling while holding hands. I saw that the painting had been ripped and then stitched back together.

Next was Winter, and then one of Wiess. There was a story here, but it wasn't time to dig into it yet. Another thing to navel-gaze about later.

I jumped when Winter spoke up next to me. "Hey, I snuck cookies from the kitchen."

"F-!" I whispered the rest. "-uck."

She munched on a cookie, then held the bag out to me as she led me away from the paintings."Well?"

I took one and nibbled on it experimentally. Chocolate chip. Yum. "Tastes good."

We continued on with the tour of the Schnee Estate. It was massive, and we probably took up the better part of a few hours just walking from place to place.

"So…" I said to Winter, gesturing around. "Where is everyone?"

"Huh?"

"Well, I'd expected there to be more staff around."

"Oh! Well, most of the staff was replaced with robots." Her voice dropped to a whisper, as if the walls had ears. "Father had most of the staff fired after that bombing."

"That's not going to happen any time soon, right?" I whispered back.

"Hopefully." Her tone made it an admission that she herself didn't know. She looked tired. "It's been hard on all of us."

We had already exited the house and entered the garden by then. It was around 3 PM judging by the sun's position, though I had no way to know whether or not Remnant's orbital characteristics are the same as Earth's. Our shoes made a steady rhythm on the stone path as we walked in silence.

"So," she looked at me, "what about you?"

"What about me?"

"You know, stuff."

I shrugged. "I just sit around and play computer games in between writing. Nothing much."

"No fighting or anything?"

"Yeah."

"You must be pretty well-off, then." She leaned back on a lamppost. "To not have to fight against the Grimm, I mean."

"Not really. I'm piss-poor, actually." I shrugged. It was a fact. "Just rather safe. The most I've ever had to deal with are thieves and bullies."

She was silent as I rambled. "I'm sorry."

I stopped and looked up at her. "Huh?"

"I'm sorry." She sighed. "I expected different, but I didn't see what I expected."

"I should be sorry as well, then." I said. "When you first came in, I expected you to be… how do I say it… a bitch?"

She laughed at that. "Ha! I'd have enough money to start my own company if I had a Lien for every time someone said that. Hey, hold up." Her scroll rang and she pulled it out of her pocket, then sighed and looked at me. "Hey, I gotta go."

"You're cool, so talk to you later!" She dashed off and disappeared in a flurry of snowflakes.

Well, that went better than I expected.

Dinner passed without further incident. Mr. Schnee and I ate in silence, while Winter was absent. I soon found myself in the room I had been loaned, lying on the bed, just letting the gears in my head spin as I processed the day's events.

I had somehow found myself in the world of Remnant, in the home of some of the most influential people in the world. That enough was cause for concern, as it seemed that Mr. Schnee would have no compunctions about throwing me out onto the street if I failed to live up to his expectations of 'being useful' and wasted his generosity in the process. The added danger was that they-and by association, I- was a target for terrorists. I had to be careful. If I didn't have an Aura and a Semblance, then my chances of survival during an attack would be very slim. Likewise, my survival would still be in question even if I had one.

At the very least, I seem to have made an ally in Winter.

However. If a week had passed, how come nobody had noticed my aura or the lack of it? How come there were no doctors to check on me.

I sighed as I opened the drawer on the nightstand and looked inside. A cylindrical device sat next to my laptop charger with a note taped to it:

 _My employees have developed a converter for your device's charging unit. Use it well. – Eisen S._

"Cool." I inspected the device and plugged the laptop's power cord into it, and it into the wall socket. A green light lit up on the side of the device as it hummed quietly, and the laptop's charging indicators lit up as well. I turned it on and started typing.

It was going to be a long night.


	3. Chapter 3

I woke up with the sun in my eyes. The bed was really very comfortable, and the soft warmth of the covers that kept me from the cold air made it very tempting to sleep in. I managed to haul myself out of bed and into the bathroom to make myself presentable. I was out of it in a few minutes freshly showered and with minty clean breath.

I'd thought about my situation some more while in the shower. Sooner or later, I'd have to explain that I'm not from Remnant. Then I'd have to explain how I knew how things were. Or perhaps they knew something already, and were hesitant to discuss. Mr. Schnee seemed to give off the impression that he knew something about my situation already. He seemed to be taking what I had said at face value.

So far, some things weren't adding up. I didn't like it, but I'd have to live with that fact for now. Perhaps I'd gone insane and this is my mind's way of coping?

I stretched and yawned, then made my way to the nightstand and looked into the drawers for things I had missed yesterday. I had ended up with a Scroll and a wallet, it seemed. I checked the wallet for identification and came out with my college ID. The Scroll's biometrics were keyed to me as well, and it seemed that it couldn't get a good read on my Aura. Whether or not that was because I had one was on the list of things to consider.

I had come up with a rough idea of what I should do.

 **1\. Learn to survive – White Fang or Grimm, I wouldn't be able to get home if I died.**

 **2\. Learn about the world – Knowledge is power. I needed to get a good understanding of the world I was in.**

 **3\. Learn skills.**

 **4\. ?**

 **5\. Profit.**

It wasn't much, but it was a start.

I sighed and laid back down on the bed. The reality hadn't sunk in yet. I wasn't sure of anything at all, and here I was creating some sort of survival plan because I treated this like a thought exercise. I would be fooling myself if I said I wanted to go through with it. Where was I really, anyway? Was I going insane? I wanted to cry, and I took that and crushed it in with the others I'd been holding in for so long it had become tiring repress. Not giving a damn about anything was a lot of effort apparently, who knew?

I tried to rationalize my arrival here as a vacation of sorts, to keep me away from the problems of home in an interesting place. It just made me feel like the floor was about to drop out under me at any moment.

I felt tired, so I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. But sleep wouldn't come. There were too many questions begging to be answered. And I would answer them, even if I had to lie to myself in the process.

I stood up and made my way to the library. I needed to make myself useful. The first step I needed to take was to learn.

* * *

Learning about the world proved to be a much more daunting task than I'd anticipated. Stacks of books towered around me, accumulated after hours of reading and cross-referencing. I was halfway through a textbook on the properties and applications of Dust, and it boggled the mind when compared to conventional science, a textbook of which I had open on my laptop.

"Studying for an exam?" A familiar voice asked. "That's quite a lot of books."

I shrugged. "It passes the time, and keeps my mind off things."

She picked up the book I was reading and closed it so she could read the title as I grasped for it. I was glad that she'd stuck a finger in between the pages. "Dust: A Primer on its Properties and Applications."

She put it back down in front of me, there was a kind of tension in her eyes. "Planning to tinker with it?"

"Yeah, I suppose. I've got to learn about a lot of things though."

"Well-" She stopped, and put a hand on the page I was reading as she looked around. "Did you hear that?"

I opened my mouth to ask, then thought the better of it and shut my trap. I heard the faint sounds of cloth in motion that coincided with quiet footsteps. Someone was lurking in the shadows.

She gestured to a light panel a short distance away. I could make it there and back in a few seconds if I ran. That would be too loud, so I slid out of my seat and slowly made my way to the switches while Winter dropped into a fighting stance.

I got the logic. Our intruder's eyes would be dark-adapted, so suddenly raising the light levels would temporarily blind them. There! I reached the panel and jammed the illumination way, way up. The lights flared and I saw a Faunus in a tight-fitting bodysuit cover their-his eyes before jumping away. He sent a flurry of blades towards us. I ducked and covered my head as a few of them thudded into the wall just above me, while Winter deflected the ones aimed at her with quick motions of her saber.

Her motions were measured and efficient as she slid forward and lashed at him with thrusts and slashes from her weapon, which were in turn deflected and parried by the assassin's arm blades. I froze. I didn't know what to do.

He jumped over her and landed in front of me with a cheshire grin. "So you're the Schnees' pet project." Pet project? They must have mistaken me for Penny!

I stopped thinking and reacted. I thrust my head forward and slammed my forehead into his nose and then hit him up the chin with a book from a nearby shelf. Though it didn't do any damage and merely pushed him back, it allowed Winter to get between us.

"Good work!" She said as I sat down on the floor, rubbing my forehead. It was like slamming my head into concrete. My sight was gray around the edges and my forehead throbbed painfully.

I felt a rush of cold air as Winter activated a glyph and skated forward with the faunus in her hand. She slammed him against a pillar with enough force to crack it and send a tremor throughout the room. He fell limp and Winter tossed him to the floor.

I looked at my hand. It came away smeared with blood. Damn. I was squishy. Second. Where was security?

"Hey." I said as Winter walked towards me. "Where's security?"

"I don't-" She froze as something clicked. "Something's up. They should have been here minutes ago."

Winter held out a hand to me, which I took and used to pull myself up with my non-bloody hand.

"What now?" I asked, wiping my forehead on my sleeve with a wince as I walked back to my laptop and started packing it up into its bag. "Safehouse?"

"Yeah." She nodded.

"But why here? Why now?"

"The White Fang are known to strike multiple targets." She said with a an angry frown. "First there was the strike on Vale yesterday, followed up by a bombing on one of our ammunition plants. Father left to survey the damage this morning. And then… here."

"It makes sense, doesn't it?" I tried to stop my hands from shaking as I bundled up the power cable. "Strike repeatedly at multiple locations, keep the authorities off-balance. What bothers me is the lack of cohesion. I'd have struck all at the same time instead of delaying."

She gave me an odd look at that, and then nodded. "The fact that multiple targets were attacked could mean that there were plans in the works. But that the attacks were unsynchronized could mean that something has affected the plans."

I grew up in a country where terrorism was close and common. . There were no less than two Islamic militant groups active alongside Communist militants. I'd moved closer to where they were most active beginning high school, but it had never affected my life directly. And now here I was in the middle of an attack, and likely a target. Safe to say, I was afraid. I forced that down too. Treat this as a thought experiment.

"You done over there?"

"Yeah." I was done in more ways than one.

"Alright."

She bent over the prone assassin and stripped him of his gear, then tossed a pair of heavy bracers at me. I fumbled with the first one, but caught it nonetheless. I caught the second without a hitch and put them on. Flexing my wrists this way and that switched the bracers from arm blades to punch daggers, and then to firearms of some sort. She tossed me a bandolier of ammunition and I spent a little time putting it on and adjusting it to fit.

"I'm sorry to do this, but…" I looked away. I heard her stab the man.

I forced down the fear, revulsion, and puke that tried to explode out of my gut with cold logic. He meant to kill us. There was no way to bring him along and keep him secure if the mansion was under hostile control. At least it had been quick. I breathed through my nose as I forced myself to pretend everything was merely a thought experiment.

She placed a hand on my shoulder and I opened my eyes as she herded me towards the door. I noticed how she positioned herself to keep me from seeing the corpse. Had Ruby and the others killed before? If they did, how did they deal with it?

* * *

The hallway was empty, though I could hear the sounds of fighting echoing in from somewhere else. How had things gone FUBAR so quickly? I had been reading and everything was alright, then suddenly I was being escorted out of a warzone. I bit my lip and suppressed the jitters. The bracers and bandolier were heavy, and I wasn't sure I could even use them properly.

I hadn't even noticed that I was breathing heavily until Winter told me to calm down.

She pushed me into cover, a bust on a marble pedestal, as a pair of faunus turned the corner and spotted us. The response was almost immediate, and I could hear the bullets snapping overhead before they carved divots into the wall and floor. The noise was deafening and earplugs made their way onto the list of things I was wishing for. I curled up as much as possible.

I heard Winter release a kiai and somebody slammed into the wall with the sound of splintered wood. More gunfire and ricochets, then moving machinery and the clash of metal on metal. I peeked out of cover. One faunus was down, slumped against the wall as he looked around dazedly. The other had transformed his gun into a claymore and was dueling with Winter, whose lighter blade was being knocked aside by the weapon's superior weight and momentum.

I sucked in a breath and bit my lip as I flexed my left wrist. The bracer opened up as the firearm components moved into place and locked together as I braced my arm with my other hand to reduce the shaking. Winter had been knocked down to her knees by the claymore's downswings. I cursed myself for not figuring out how to fire earlier.

I clenched my wrist, and my arm was torn out of my grasp by the recoil of the burst. I gritted my teeth and steadied my aim again, ignoring the throbbing that made its way up my arm. The second burst was more on target, and the faunus's aura flickered as the rounds hit home. He turned to face me as the claymore transformed back into a rifle, Winter forgotten.

I froze. He brought his weapon up. His finger began to tighten around the trigger. And then the tip of a blade thrust out of his chest. He crumpled to the ground as bullets whizzed above my head.

I think I passed out then, because the next thing I remember was waking up on a bed. It was stiff compared to the one in my room, and I was kept from falling by a set of guard rails. A medical bed? Given the engine noise all around and the beeping coming from my right, I figured I was riding on an ambulance or transport.

I brought a hand up to my throbbing forehead and felt the bandage there. I remembered lacerating it open on an assassin's face. My left arm was in a plastic tube of sorts and supported by a sling. Had I broken it when I fired the bracers? My head hurt.

"He's awake, Lieutenant." A voice off to my right said. I didn't know its owner.

"Thank you." Winter came over and looked at me with a wry smile on her face. "I resent dragging your unconscious butt all the way to the transport."

"Sorry." I looked away.

She patted me on the shoulder. "Hey, I was kidding. You did good out there."

I nodded, though the act made my head ache. I wasn't in the mood for it. She patted my shoulder and went to talk to another person. A soldier, going by the armor and uniform. The medic ran me through a battery of tests, and then gave me a cup of water and some painkillers for my headache.

I felt more useless than ever. I couldn't help but feel that the attack on the Schnee estate was motivated at least in part by my presence as the words 'pet project' echoed in my mind. It was likely that I was merely guilty by association, that I was a victim of my circumstance. But it was also possible that the Schnees were also a part of the puzzle of my appearance on Remnant. Mr. Schnee certainly gave off the impression that he knew more than I did.

There was also the fact that I was far from being an asset to my supposed caretakers. I couldn't fight. The bracers had made that a certainty. I knew nothing about the world, about Dust, about the politics, its economy, the politics of its economy. All I had were half-formed ideas and thought experiments.

I closed my eyes and let myself go to sleep. Dreams drowning under a horde of murderous faunus and robots made for an uneasy rest.


	4. Chapter 4

**Vale, Schnee Ammo Plant, Schnee Estate.**

 **Vale, caused by RWBY's discovery of Roman's plans.**

 **Schnee Ammo, Estate to capitalize on flow of reinforcements towards Vale, which leaves Atlas with weaker defenses. However plans are disorganized, causing slow(?) followup.**

 **Schnee Ammo to weaken Gov't's war capability, steal supplies, weapons.**

 **Schnee Estate to decapitate SDC? Was I mistaken for part of Atlas's synthetic aura program?**

 **Why could I be mistaken for synthetic? Sudden arrival on Schnee Estate, surrounded by one week by scientists and doctors. Could be mistaken for technical team to construct me on Schnee grounds.**

 **Why am I here?**

 **Likely:**

 **-Insane, coma, fever dream. Can't wake up. Maybe if I think hard enough I can change things.**

 **Probably:**

 **-ROB. Hopefully Friendly ROB, hope not BROB.**

 **-Murphy.**

 **-BOTH MURPHY AND ROB?!**

 **Unlikely:**

 **-Xanatos Gambit by Mr. Schnee/ other people. Probably am not target of whatever device brought me here.**

 **-Remnant needs Earth perspective on stuff. But why?1/1**

 **Fuck no:**

 **-Chosen one.**

 **Game Plan:**

 **\- Survive**

 **\- Learn**

 **\- Thrive**

 **(haha, fuck no)**

 **(Why not equestria)**

 **To not snap: Focus on details. "thought experiment" is mantra. Keep self occupied. Am I doublethinking myself? thought experiment thought experiment thought experiment**

I stared at my laptop screen, totally exhausted by the hours I had spent weeping out my frustration as I organized my thoughts in a text document, creatively labeled: . Seeing the kingdom of Atlas from the airship's observation deck had been the exact moment when reality finally sunk in for me. I remembered bumping into crew as I made my way down the corridors and puking my guts out into the toilet as images of blood and guts flashed before my eyes. Winter had come by to drop off dinner, which sat untouched on the table.

My stomach rumbled and I sighed as I ground my palms into my eye sockets. "Goddamnit. I'm a wreck."

"Fuck it." I reached for the cold dinner and started eating. Mashed potatoes with gravy and mixed vegetables for the side. Some sort of beef stew for the main dish. The food did make me feel a little better, though I would prefer it hot. Serves me right for being a bitch.

I took a quick shower when I was done and got into the clothes I'd been lent when I got here. The striped gray and white off-duty uniform clashed against my sneakers, but clothes were clothes. I picked up the tray and made my way to the mess to return it, standing aside to let the crew pass whenever I encountered them. Some of the crew seemed to have recognized me, and the looks they gave me were either annoyed or sympathetic. I tried to ignore them.

I left the tray in the deposit area and walked over to one of the windows. The airship was patrolling the skies above Atlas as its complement of escorts cycled in and out from their CAP missions. A pillar of smoke billowed over the horizon and stained the sunset brilliant red. Firecracker-like explosions flared and burst amid the rubble of the complex. I figured it was the SDC munitions plant that had been struck yesterday.

The Kingdom's towers were all slate-gray blocks of glass and concrete, while the architecture of the suburbs was more varied, though trended towards utilitarian collections of regular shapes. Some of the older buildings looked more ornate, while newer ones were sleeker and more 'high-tech' in appearance. The parks were mostly Japanese-style gardens on a massive scale. Brutalist architecture and zen minimalism were characteristics of Atlas, apparently. It was a perfect match for the snowy peaks of the Sentinel Range that bordered the Kingdom's northern sector.

I played with the touch display on the windows, zooming in and out on various neighborhoods and industrial sectors, and I spent a few minutes watching swarms of workers and robots weld together the sections of a military airship while a finished one lifted off and flew elsewhere, its fresh hull gleaming in the sunlight.

I almost jumped when I noticed the tall wolf faunus in off-duty uniform standing to my left. He was looking at the ruins of the plant. "Don't they know that what they did will only make it worse?"

I really didn't want to discuss this right now, but I felt his pain. "I'm Carlos." I forced myself to say.

He looked a little miffed, but I guess he understood because the look disappeared from his face almost instantly. The fact that I looked like a wreck probably helped.

"Weird name." He said. "Ash. So, I heard you came up from the Schnee place?"

"Yeah. I was staying as a guest when they attacked. Now I'm going to be staying aboard for a few weeks while they sort things out." Technical truth, that first part. I wanted to change the topic. "Have you seen Lieutenant Schnee?"

"The LT?" His brows furrowed in thought. "Last I heard, she was debriefing the Captain."

"I'll just wait, then." I continued playing with the window display. "Could you tell me about the ship? Nothing classified of course. I'm just curious."

"Sure."

I learned that I was aboard the AMAS _Glory Dawn_ , a Greyhound-class assault landing ship. She had a crew of 350 and had quarters for a regiment of troops alongside facilities for roughly 500 combat robots. She was technically a military airship, but was among other things an interim safehouse for SDC personnel while the ones 'downstairs' were swept and secured. She would be handed over to the combat schools by the beginning of the term and would become essentially a glorified school bus and training campus for the Atlesian combat schools like other aged airships.

Ash had managed to show me to the rec area before leaving to begin his shift in the CIC, and I occupied myself with the game machines. They were surprisingly similar, and the most glaring difference was the fact that holograms were everywhere. I found myself scoring major points on a Time Crisis-alike to kill time. Anything to keep me distracted from my thoughts. The recoil system was a bit more hardcore than I was used to and it had been a challenge to get my aim right for the first few lives.

Player two joined in and we shot some mooks for a few minutes in silence.

"Hey." Winter said. "How're you holding up?"

"Fine. Just…" I sighed. "Trying not to think about it."

She said after a little while. "You've got to let it out and deal with it sooner or later. Now, I'm not gonna force you to talk or anything. You do that on your own time. Just… don't wait too long. It'll fester, and it'll hurt more than anything."

"I'll try." I covered her with the machine gun while she reloaded and moved around to get a better position. The mooks fell down and we advanced screens.

I think we managed to get to the end of the third level before that Mad Dog ripoff dropped a half-dozen grenades into our position and killed us. I shot out my initials on the high-score list. 5th place. Winter said it wasn't bad for a newbie. There was a massive divide between my score and 4th place, which signified who the 'pros' were.

I put down the light gun and turned to Winter as I swallowed down my apprehension. "Can we talk?"

"Sure." She patted me on the shoulder and smiled.

* * *

"Do I have an Aura?" I asked as we leaned over the railing, wind in our hair.

"We don't know." She said. "Consensus says you do, but we didn't try to activate it."

I wondered. "Why not?"

"Figured it would be up to you when you woke up."

"Oh." I sucked in a breath. The air was cleaner than back home. "Can we do it now?"

"Sure." She said. "Close your eyes."

I felt something linger over my forehead, probably her hand, and I felt a wash of static radiate from a point in my skull and throughout my body. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and as the static feeling traveled down my arms and legs and doubled back on my toes and fingers, up again into my torso. I expected her to chant something.

"So…" I asked as I opened my eyes. "Is it done?"

"One way to find out."

She cast a glyph, and then threw a punch at me. Time slowed to a crawl and sped up at the same time. I couldn't move, but I felt something push her fist away just enough for it to meet only air.

"Hey!" I frowned at her as she threw another punch at me, which similarly veered off-course. My forehead throbbed as she tossed more punches at me, each meeting the same fate. Her firsts rushed by my ears, but never connected.

She leaned back, apparently satisfied. "Alright. So I got a read on your Aura."

"So I have one?"

"Yeah." She nodded with a big, cocky grin. "It doesn't absorb the force of attacks like most people do, it deflects them. Which is cool because it usually means that your aura takes less damage per hit, but it's also dangerous because very powerful, very sudden attacks could power right through and hit you directly. Sniper, and you're dead."

"Okay." I raised an eyebrow. "So, I've got to keep alert and moving right?"

"Yup! Your Aura can probably do a lot of other things too, since it's a manifestation of what makes you, you."

I looked up at the sky, wondering what exactly that means. "Well, at least I'm not that squishy anymore." I looked back at her. "How do I control it?"

"That depends. We'll have to find out what makes you tick."

"Ah." I breathed. As long as I was distracted. "And I guess we're going to find that out next?"

"Yup!"

"Thought so."

Winter subjected me to a battery of physical tests that left me panting for breath on the practice area's soft floor. My everything burned with exertion, and I think I pulled my soul. I just wanted to close my eyes and drift away on the absolute comfort of the stiff foam under my back. She had worked me into the red with just a few punches, and that hit that got through and slammed into my shoulder still throbbed. I was probably bruised under my clothes.

"Fuck…" I groaned. "Is this the last one?"

"For now." She grinned.

"Oh joy."

I hadn't been in the best of shape before I got here, and I still wasn't. My lifestyle had become sedimentary, a personal term for post-sedentary, after I had given up on life and decided to rot away in my room. Though I still retained some definition from when I used to play soccer, and the yardwork that I could be persuaded to do often entailed chopping off thick branches with a machete so not everything was lost. Hopefully.

I looked up at Winter. She hadn't even broken a sweat. She bounced on the balls of her feet to keep herself moving as she beat up a training robot with a flurry of kicks and punches, while dancing out of the way of its retaliations. That same robot had knocked me on the flat of my ass three times in a row. Her foot snapped up with a yell and the robot's head recoiled backwards as its 'eye' dimmed. It fell in a heap.

"Go Team Winter… yay..." I managed to clap thrice before I fell asleep.

The shooting range proved to be more enjoyable than physicals I had been enduring the past few days. I had already gotten some of the basics of aiming and shooting down from years of light-gun gaming, and a few posture corrections and some getting yelled at by the instructor had me beating personal records as I gunned down metal and paper targets alike. More cerebrally entertaining however, was learning how to maintain the firearms under the quartermaster's watchful eye.

The quartermaster, with some prodding by Winter, had given me a right-handed pistol and walked me through its disassembly and reassembly a few times before telling me that I had five minutes to make it left-handed and reassemble it into working condition.

I had learned that Remnant weapons came in three flavors: Mass-produced weapons like the Schnee Armories Model-19 Mark-11 pistol I had in pieces on the table. It could unfold into a tonfa for fighting in close quarters and could be used as a flashlight in both modes; The second type of weapons were sold as kits and individual parts, like Warhammer figurines and gunpla back on Earth. An example of those were the bracers wielded by the assassin, which Winter pointed out after disassembling them; The third were scratch-built weapons designed, optionally forged, by their wielders. Huntsmen and Huntresses usually used those kinds of weapons. To do so was a rite of passage into adulthood, and signified that the wielder was ready to take on the world.

It took me several tries to get it the reassembly time under ten minutes. Now I was just working to get it under five.

"Six minutes and forty five seconds." He grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. "Keep up the good work and you'll be an adult in no time!"

I nodded and started disassembling the thing again. Being distracted meant that I couldn't see blood and death whenever I closed my eyes. He must have seen something because the smile on his face disappeared.

* * *

"We need to talk." Winter pushed the lid of my laptop down so I could look into her eyes. "You've been running yourself ragged for weeks!" One and a half weeks, actually.

I yawned. I was very tired. "I'm fine."

"No you're not!" She growled. "Look at yourself in the mirror, will you?"

I knew what she meant, but I had to keep going. I had to keep myself distracted

"You haven't been getting any sleep. You've got bags under your eyes. They're bloodshot. Your hair's a mess. The buttons on your shirt are all wrong. You fell asleep while firing a rifle for Dust's sake!"

"What else am I supposed to do!?" I spat. "I have to learn to survive in this godforsaken place!"

I had forced myself into a rhythm of working myself to exhaustion. When I wasn't training physically, I was on the firing range. When I wasn't doing that, I was reading until I passed out. I wanted to stop seeing the blood. I wanted to learn how to survive. Maybe both. Winter had been proud of my effort the first few days, and then that had dissolved into concern after the first week.

"And you are!" Her voice softened. "You are. But you're pushing yourself too hard. C'mon, it doesn't take a shrink to know something's bothering you. Grimm, everyone you've met thinks so!"

"Winter." I gritted my teeth and swallowed something I wanted to say, but didn't mean. "I'm not from here, okay? I just want to go home."

"I know." Her voice was quiet. "We've got contacts in all four Kingdoms looking through the citizens' records. We-"

"Well you can stop!" I snapped. "I'm not from around here! Not from Remnant! I'm probably not even in the same universe!"

She looked at me like I had snapped. I know I sounded like it. I felt like it. I screwed my eyes shut and forced myself to keep going. "You know the story. I was just wasting my life away, then something comes along and sends me to fuck-knows-where like I'm in some shitty sci-fi story."

Truth be told, I was just denying the fact that the chances of me going back home were practically zero. I think I was crying already.

"And the attack… every time I close my eyes, I hear gunfire and stabbing and screaming. I see people die. I could rationalize to myself all day. I could pretend everything is a thought experiment and I could push it all deep down, but there's only so much I can take. I think this is-this is it…"

I remembered Winter holding me in her arms as I sobbed into her shoulder and broke down completely.


	5. Chapter 5

I had gone back to routine. Physicals in the morning, lunch break, firearms in the afternoon, study before I went to bed. Some days, I got help from some of the combat veterans in getting my head back on straight. I had been surprised that Ash was among them. Other days, I had blocks of free time I spent writing and gaming. I felt rather guilty that I was drawing time from these people but I had nothing else to give back, but I accepted the aid and companionship anyway.

Of course, I also wondered why SDC spent the time and effort keeping my useless ass aboard, and why my forehead throbbed so much at times. Trying to answer the first question generally led me to think that I was an investment of some sort. Which opened a whole new can of worms in turn. If I was an investment, then what results did they expect?

As for the throbbing forehead, I figured that I had suffered a head injury of some sort and this was the after-effect. I had been out for a week after all, and a quick trip to the infirmary confirmed that something in my head had been fixed. The medical officer prescribed me some painkillers for if it got too painful.

Somehow, I felt that the forehead throbbing and the investment were connected. Of course, I had no way of figuring it out just yet. I wondered when I would be let off the airship and made a note to ask Winter when.

I opened my eyes and sat up, blinking away the stabbing pain bright sunlight caused in my eyes as I stumbled over to my laptop. I opened notepad++ and started organizing my thoughts. Today, they went to the possibilities that this piece of technology I had with me, and the data it stored could bring. Reverse-engineering the laptop had the potential to open up entirely new avenues of research. If only I could find out just what was needed, and then sell it to the right people.

And then there was the data itself. Encarta 2014, the Wikipedia dump I had downloaded on a whim. There were so many ideas that could revolutionize a society with a radically different base from our own. It was Pandora's Box. Given time, the ideas stored on my laptop's hard drive could either save the people of Remnant, or doom them to extinction. And I was the butterfly whose futile wingbeats would set a hurricane into motion.

I asked myself: "What do I do?"

* * *

The mess hall was more crowded than usual, more so around the televisions that were mounted along the inner wall. It was the beginning of the Vytal Festival, and everyone was eager to tune in and watch the tournament.

"Hey, Ash." I waved from my table. "I've got a question if you're free."

He grinned and sat down across me. "Sure. Takes my mind off the mess food."

The faunus leaned in close and whispered. "Don't tell her I said that."

"Can do." I chuckled as I cut my sausage into portions.

"So, what's that question?"

I speared a chunk of sausage and forked it into my mouth. It actually wasn't that bad if I compared it to student center food, and sometimes that could be great. "Let's say you have a box that contains many things that could change the world so utterly that it might be unrecognizable when the dust settles. Opening it could either save the world or destroy it, and you might not know which is which. What would you do?"

"Oh, that's easy." He shoved a spoonful of mashed potatoes in his mouth and washed it down with a glass of water. "I'd bury it really deep. Get rid of it, whatever it takes to prevent it from opening."

"Even if it could bring peace and hope?"

"The world's doing fine as it is. If you push too far, the everything will come crashing down."

I chuckled.

"What?"

"You said 'the everything'."

"I blame it on you." He rolled his eyes. "But yeah, I'd rather not risk it."

I nodded. He had a very good point.

"Alright." He gave me a wolfish grin. "My turn to ask a deep and philosophical question: Pyrrha Nikos or Claire de Rojo? Pretend they're both 18."

"Oh fuck no! Not this again!" I rolled my eyes and continued eating. "Fucking pervert... Second, aren't they 18 already?"

I made a show of standing up and pretended to take my food somewhere else. He followed, of course, and started laying out to me the advantages and disadvantages of either idol, and I just shook my head and played along. Eventually, Winter's comments about my Aura came to mind and I asked him about it.

"So, like. Winter says my Aura's not as common as other auras. What's up with that?"

Ash looked at me for a minute as he scratched his chin. "Alright. So, an Aura is a manifestation of one's soul. How it manifests depends largely on who the person is."

"Alright." I nodded. I got that part.

"It just means that you're not the type to hit problems head on and push back. You'd rather avoid or deflect them away and tackle them from another angle. You're less a straight up, in your face fighter and more of some badass stealth guy.

"I could be, anyway." I admitted. At this point, I really did not want to fight.

"Yeah."

He gave me some tips on Aura management but had to leave eventually, and I was left alone thinking of Pandora's Box.

I couldn't ask Winter of her opinion as she was 'downstairs' liaising between SDC and the Atlesian military. All the better I think, as Mr. Schnee could quite possibly be among the worst hands for my data to fall into. It wasn't that I distrusted Winter entirely, I just didn't feel I was ready to break it to her yet.

They may have been beneficent to me, but their motivations were yet unknown and I had no way of knowing them without putting myself in a situation I couldn't extract myself from. Their reputation further muddied the issue, and I had little to no idea of whether or not it was deserved or if it was a smear campaign. The reputation may as well have shades of both.

I was torn out of my reverie by the General Quarters alarm, and I stood around being confused as the crew rushed to their stations. Blast shutters dropped in over the windows as the combat lighting flicked on. A pair of Levy combat robots led by a Valkyrie trooper escorted me back to my quarters and locked the hatch tight.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Grimm." The Valkyrie replied, clutching his rifle tightly. "We wandered off course and got ambushed by a flock of Nevermores. Damned things scare the shit out of me."

I had to remind myself that Remnant had no GPS, or even basic space travel due to the lunar debris clogging up its orbits as I poured myself a glass of water from the sink. Inertial, compass, and visual navigation might also be problematic because of various factors.

"So, uh." I turned to the guy. "Water?"

"Sure. Thanks." I poured another glass and handed it over to him before sitting down on the bed.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants. The rasp of gatling guns and the drumbeat of the _Glory Dawn_ 's sole 5" gun seemed to go on for hours, and the hair-raising calls of Nevermores and the scream of tortured metal would haunt my sleep.

One of the combat shutters that protected the viewports of my quarters failed to rise, and a risky peek over a balcony railing showed me why: a trio of clawmarks several meters in length had been gouged into the armored hull around where my cabin would be, and the staccato thudding I had heard was when the airborne Grimms' weaponized quills had smashed gun emplacements and other equipment. Flames and smoke billowed out of one of the engine pods and the airship listed slightly. Several of its radiator 'feathers' had been broken off or bent out of shape.

The captain announced that we would be returning to port for repairs, and all VIPs would be offloaded, and I watched the crew prepare to get underway.

My mood only worsened when I remembered that Grimm were drawn to negative emotions, and I was currently a simmering pit of them. Therefore, my guilt-hijacked logical train said, I had a part to play in this. It had a point though. I needed to get rid of my baggage. I needed to take charge of my life.

* * *

I fiddled with the bracers on my arms, just switching them between modes as I waited. The quartermaster had practically insisted that I take them as I had come aboard with them anyway, and were therefore 'mine' on the paperwork. No weapon, he argued, and also a target for the White Fang. I was just begging to get kidnapped or assassed, he said. I think he meant assassinated. And it wasn't like I'd be in any trouble for carrying weapons while on Remnant.

* * *

Fuck my life.

I was sitting on a bench in a police station with my head in my hands as I mentally kicked myself for my stupidity. It turned out that Atlas had different carry laws than anything-goes Vale. Unless I had proper ID, a carry permit, and was wearing the prescribed combat school and military uniforms, I wasn't allowed to carry at all. Though, the police proved to be fairly sane and understanding once I explained my situation and I would come out of this with just the legal equivalent of a slap on the wrist. Procedure was procedure and I had to wait until somebody with ID came by to pick me up. Therefore, I was very embarrassed for Winter who I was sure wasn't supposed to be playing babysitter for a 20 year-old manchild such as myself.

"Hi, Winter." I said quietly. "I fucked up."

"Eh. You could do worse." She shrugged and patted me on the shoulder before signing the paperwork.

At least I had gotten pizza.

We ate the pizza while driving to the safehouse.

* * *

The new safehouse was less of a house and more of an apartment block in one of the middle-class subdivisions bordering Atlas's CBD. It was fairly modern and rather easy on the eyes despite the spartan decor, and I read the various papers tacked up on the notice board. One of which was an official-looking flyer with schedules for Atlas's community building programs. Communal street cleaning, home restoration, and all that. I expected the Red Army Choir to filter out of the citywide PA system at any moment.

On the bright side, it was next to a library! I made a note to visit later when I had settled in. I followed Winter up to what would be home for an indeterminate time and put my bag down on the couch. All I had with me were three complete outfits, my laptop, the bracers, and my Scroll so it was easy enough to get everything unpacked.

Winter had to leave again and I took the time to see the layout of the apartment. There was a combination living room and dining room with a holographic screen mounted over the fireplace. It also doubled as a personal computer of sorts given the foldout keyboard and trackpad integrated into the coffee table. Generous, but I'd rather do most of my work on my laptop. The fact that Remnant computers had a totally different architecture from ours made for a supremely powerful barrier against external access.

The kitchen was enclosed in a cubicle-type arrangement, while the bedroom was roomy and came with another fireplace. Everything was done up in the modernist decor that was vogue in Atlas these days. High contrast accented with glass, metal, or polished wood. Angular shapes offset by organic forms and vice versa.

I noticed the manila folder lying on the nightstand and brought it over to the coffee table to look at. Inside were a few legal documents for my identification. According to the documents, I was Carlos Marion from Vacuo who had just moved in last week to pursue employment in Atlas. I was 20 years old and had graduated from Sirentide Combat School. I set those away and looked at the medical data, it had been updated with a prescription for painkillers for the lasting effects of a head injury I had received last week during a sparring match, and monthly checkups to be done by a Doctor Braun. I set those away too.

What really put me ill at ease was that a letter from Mr. Schnee explained that I had two months to prove my worth to him in a presentation. He didn't need to write down the consequences of me not meeting his expectations. In the meantime however, I could count on a Remnant education and a moderate weekly stipend to be deposited in a bank account on my behalf. The last of the papers in the folder was my lesson schedule. 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, Monday to Friday. Tuesday and Thursday were for practical applications.

I made a note to get half of that stipend in my own bank account as soon as possible. Meanwhile, my thoughts veered once more towards Pandora's Box. I stroked my laptop's lid, wondering if I should just take a hammer to it. So I asked myself why I would want to open the Box.

Was it because I wanted free stuff? Yes. Was it because I wanted to make a positive change in my life? Yes. What about on the world? Also yes. Could I handle the awesome responsibility of such a task? For that, I had no answer.

I made sure my laptop was secure, and then made my way to the library.

* * *

I remembered Dr. Oobleck while halfway through _Glass Menagerie: A History of the Faunus Rights Revolution_. His speech about using knowledge and education to benefit the world had struck a chord with me when I first heard it, and it still did. He reminded me a lot of Carl Sagan, and I think they would have done a great many things together.

I put the book down and traced my fingers over the dust jacket, which featured a faunus woman holding a flag aloft while surrounded by her troops. It was almost closing time, and I spent the few minutes left to think. I was among one of the last people to leave, having checked out the book and a few others. Among them, _Glass Menagerie_ 's companion book, _Castle of Glass: The Crystallization of Humanity's Kingdoms_. The two books provided a look at the Faunus Rights Revolution from both sides, detailed the motivations of key figures, and then explored the implications of the post-War world. There were heroes and villains on either side of the conflict that marked the beginning of the cycle of retaliation and escalation now present between Humanity and the Faunus that would ultimately end in extinction if it is not broken.

 _Castle of Glass_ had made it quite clear. The frequency and size of Grimm attacks had grown ever since the War. While the Dust companies were more than adequate at supplying the defensive needs of civilization, the increasing militancy of the White Fang was beginning to endanger the steady flow of Dust to regions where it is needed most. Meanwhile, retaliations caused ever more faunus to radicalize as the White Fang's rhetoric suddenly began to 'make sense.'

The cycle of retaliation fed another. Morale across the board dropped due to the White Fang's activities. Faunus and human alike suffered in combat against fellow sapients, and troops meant to fight the Grimm were being pulled towards counterterrorism, a mission for which they were not equipped nor trained to accomplish. The decrease in confidence and fighting ability attracted more Grimm, which further dropped morale.

The solution lay in reform, but whether or not it was too late for reform was in question.

Opening the Box could help break the cycles that threatened to end civilization, but also stood a large chance of intensifying them. The ideas contained within the Box would take on lives of their own once released, the knowledge and rhetoric of our own civil rights movements and of our radical groups most especially. I may as well resurrect Martin Luther King Jr. and Adolf Hitler at the same time. But even something as impartial as an equation like 'energy equals mass times the speed of light squared' could change the world.

So how could I change the world? One step at a time, I suppose.

And that first step would begin with Schnee.

 **Two Months Later**

The hardest part about talking to the owner of a company is asking him to shrink the company for the good of the company. The logic was that SDC could afford to give up some of its presence on the market and still turn in a hefty annual income. Since its competitors would have taken up some of the slack, White Fang operations would have much less effect on SDC's standing. The presence of other companies would also fuel innovation and eventually open new markets as SDC would try to remain competitive.

I had also proposed a wage increase and the reduction of working hours upon the logic that happy and well-rested workers were more productive, and less likely to tip off the White Fang. Whatever SDC was doing with the faunus employees also had to stop. It was giving the White Fang plenty of recruits, and their revenge activities were hurting business by interrupting supply lines, destroying manufacturing plants, and killing employees. SDC loses a full 25% of its annual income fixing the problems created by the White Fang, another 17% to its PMCs, and 8% to the Kingdoms that protected its assets. Giving faunus and human employees equal treatment would go a long way in reducing those expenses.

Mr. Schnee was silent the entire time, and so were his daughters. They looked at me for long minutes after I was done and I felt as if they were judging me.

"Do you really think that you can change what is?" Mr. Schnee said, lacing his fingers together.

"I don't know." I replied. "I only know that I must try, because it would be irresponsible of me to do otherwise. I want to see a better future for all of us. I want to walk a path that would take me there."

Wiess spoke up. "And what if you only make things worse?"

"Then the guilt will be mine alone."

They were silent once more, and I could feel the sweat bead on the back of my neck.

"I think I speak for the three of us when I say that we'll walk with you." Winter said.

Mr. Schnee looked less tired somehow. I think that was a good sign.


	6. Chapter 6

Two months of hard work had finally paid off. I had immersed myself in Remnant's culture, history, and science and come out with a plan that was now in motion. I knew that it would be months for the changes to become evident. There was so much friction to overcome within the corporate ranks even for the Schnee family and there was so much I had yet to learn. There were gaps in the knowledge that could lead to disaster, and I felt that perhaps I had already made mistakes. But I reminded myself that letting self-doubt control me, rather than guide me would only extinguish the hope that I wanted to share.

I wasn't under any illusions that it would be easy. There were almost too many things that could go wrong, too many enemies to make as we tried to pull the world out of the downward spiral of retaliation and escalation. But Weiss had been a reminder of the fact that we had allies in the waiting as well. It was only up to us to reach out to them.

The next step, I figured, was to remind the people of hope. I had discovered the Peace Charter that had been signed in the wake of the Faunus War and its message of peace and brotherhood between humans and faunus, and the mission it had entrusted to everyone to foster compassion and understanding between the two races, to heal old wounds and forge new bonds, to strengthen the tentative peace into a welcomed and lasting one.

It was a message of hope that had fallen by the wayside as greed, ignorance, and prejudice festered in the wounds left by the war. Bigots from either species had twisted the Charter's words and used them as weapons of hate and intolerance that escalated to the breaking point that resulted in the White Fang's change of heart.

Where there was once a yearning for equality, was now a thirst for blood.

But, I couldn't help but wonder if there were still others who held on to what the White Fang originally stood for. If so, where were they?

"Hey." Winter placed her hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and looked at her. "What're you thinking of?"

"White Fang." I said, then reassured her when that concerned look went on her face. "No, no. Not like that. I was just wondering if there are still members of the White Fang, or ex-members, who still believe in what they originally stood for."

"Well." She hummed. "If there are, they're really good at hiding, especially if they're still running with the White Fang."

I sat up and stretched my back. "True. Maybe we'll get informants that way. Maybe we won't."

"And it's risky too."

"And don't forget, if they find out you guys are involved the situation will go all FUBAR."

"FUBAR?"

"It's a military term from where I come from." I reached for the coffee pot and poured myself a cuppa. "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition."

"Ah." She poured herself a cup too, then grimaced after taking a sip. "Sounds useful. Wait a minute."

She stood up and answered her ringing Scroll, and I saw the mask go over her face once again while I respectfully didn't notice the details of her conversation with the military man on the other end of the line, judging by her use of 'sir.' She frowned faintly several times, and she sighed in frustration when he finally hung up.

"Damnit! It's too early in the morning to be dealing with people like him." She seethed. "Sure. I'm all for using robots against the Grimm. That was what they were made for after all."

"But?"

"Colonel Glass wants to use them in ops against the White Fang, again!" She put her scroll down. "Even the Knights are terrible against sapient opponents. Everyone knows that. And there's the fact that they have no discretion! Just shoot to kill! Top it off with bad intel! Every op we're forced to send them ends up… FUBAR because of that!"

She took in a breath. "Schnee only makes the military programs them, but we still get the splash."

"Can't you appeal to General Ironwood?" It was my turn to put my hand on her shoulder, and she slumped tiredly into a chair.

"I can try, but it'll take months for him to get back to Atlas to assess the situation for himself because he's off managing security for the festival!"

"You could threaten to cut supply. Say that their usage of your robots doesn't meet the standards that SDC sets."

She winced. "We could have done that, but now that we're easing off the pressure on our competitors and allowing them to grow… Atlas now has a bunch of upstarts to choose from. Orange Psychotronics for example."

"The one with the crazy robots?"

"That one."

"What about a demonstration to prove precisely why that sort of programming is bad?"

"Something to discredit our own product?"

"No. something to discredit narrow-minded thinking."

"We're going to make a lot of enemies, aren't we?"

"Hey. At least we have each other."

She bit her lip, and then looked away.

* * *

Records of The Great War were unsurprisingly sparse and incomplete. The ruins of the Empire the people of Remnant were either long overgrown, or torn down to make room for new construction. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a Great War museum could be found in Atlas, and I immediately made plans to visit. But first, I needed to get rid of this headache.

The room spun a bit as I stood up, and I had to hold on to the chair to keep from falling. Maybe I'd contracted some sort of disease native to Remnant? I managed to get my 'going outside' clothes on and checked my pants for my wallet. It was there. I made my way to the pharmacy. I showed the lady behind the counter my ID and by prescription, then bought a bottle of water to help a pill down. It helped immensely and I sat down on a bench in the park to think.

I turned the bottle over in my hands, reading the label. Remnant medicines were essentially blends of various types of Dust. Traditional Remnant medicines were also made on the same principle and used various blends of dried plants and animal parts that also contained concentrations of Dust. It made sense, I suppose. The people of Remnant didn't generally get sick the same way we do. An Aura's passive healing effects took care of that, though there were some microbes and parasites that could survive an Aura's energies to wreak havoc on their host.

Instead, a great number of common illnesses were caused by imbalances in the flow of the Aura's energies throughout the body, and the intake of various combinations of Dust in the right amounts would correct the flow. I chuckled. I would have dismissed this as quackery on Earth. But I wasn't on Earth and things were different here on Remnant so I just took things as they were.

I sighed. I wondered what was happening on Earth, whether or not my family was alright, and whether or not that same stroke of luck that brought me here would happen again and bring me back.

A gaggle of schoolgirls, judging by the uniform and the chatter, brought me out of my thoughts. One of them came by and asked me if I could watch their stuff. Sure, I nodded. Then they all came over and dropped all manner of bags and purses and weapons on the empty space beside me. I had to adjust a spear that had fallen the wrong way and poked at my cheek.

They split off into two groups. One of the groups had gone to one of the sand beds to rake sand and meditate, the other went to another to drill and spar. Fighting was very much a cultural activity here on Remnant. Atlesian styles were very precise and motion-efficient while Mistralian ones were rather more graceful, but no less effective. Vale was a mixing pot of styles, though I guess their 'own' flavor was more of a brawl. Or was that Vacuo?

Schoolgirls took to the rocks in pairs and began fighting while the rest watched and cheered. I opened up my scroll and started drawing, analyzing how they fought as I sketched the motions. 'Raven', the girl with black hair, liked to move around and had a very fluid style that could switch from precise and efficient to very showy displays that used her hair as a distraction.

"Why doesn't she just grab on to the hair?" I asked the girl who was standing by the water fountain and filling bottles.

She looked at Raven and her partner, then to me. "Conditioner."

"Oh." That made some sense.

Raven's opponent had tried to do just that, and a kick to the gut had her sprawling in the sand. Only it did not. The girl used her semblance to stick herself to the rock and rebound with a headbutt, sending the girl with slippery hair into the sand.

"Hey, that's cheating!" Raven called out and the schoolgirls immediately divided into two camps arguing whether or not it was cheating.

The one filling the bottles sighed and rolled her eyes.

"This happens a lot, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. Hey, sorry about this." She turned to them and called out. "Why don't we all ask this guy?"

I quirked an eyebrow up at her and shrugged as they turned to me. "Well, if you were all using Semblance, then I don't see why it would be cheating. If you weren't, then it's cheating."

Apparently that was good enough because they carried on with their rounds.

Minutes later, the other group started screaming as a combatant flew into the air a dug a trench into their lot of sand and ruined all the rakework.

* * *

Calla, my sparring partner lashed out with a kick aimed at my jaw. It and threw her off balance enough that hooking my foot around her ankle and pulling sent her sprawling on the large, flat rock. She recovered quickly and flipped over her back and landed in a crouch. We had been in a stalemate for a minute or two since the match started. Her punches were pushed away by my Aura and I was too slow to get good hits in.

"C'mon, Cally!" One of the girls called out. "Hit him already!"

"I can't!"

"Why not! He's big!" The girls beside the one egging Calla on giggled. "NOT LIKE THAT!"

Truth be told, the top of her head was about chin level for me. And then suddenly we were face to face and her head was quickly approaching. I put my elbow in the way and swept my arm to the side, but she danced out of the way of that and jabbed at my kidney. I felt it connect this time, and I winced. The pain faded as I maneuvered to get some space, but she grabbed my arm, surged forward and tossed me over her shoulder and into the sand.

I rolled over onto my back and took the offered towel to wipe my face of sand.

"That sucked."

"That was actually pretty average." One of the girls said. "One minute and ten seconds. The very best of us can hold out against her for around three or four, and that's either Raven or Sandie."

"Thanks then." I stood up and stretched a bit before hopping up and down a little to get most of the sand off.

Twayblade, the water girl who had invited me to spar, tossed me a bottle of water. I caught it and drank about half before placing it with the other bottles. Cally came up and punched me in the shoulder with a grin.

"Up for round two, hot stuff?"

"Maybe. What time is it?"

"Around four past noon!" Someone offered.

"Well, I guess I'm not going to that museum, then." I shrugged. "Sure. Let's do round two."

Round Two started off similarly to the first bout. We circled each other for a bit as we sized each other up. Her stance was solid and spread, making her hard to push or throw but I knew from experience that she could move _fast_. I decided to stay light on my feet so I could more easily move out of the way. That saved me from getting thrown again, and I stepped back from her to gain some extra distance and time to think.

She could only move quickly in short bursts, and had to spend some time between each burst as well. So if I kept her moving, she would tire out and I would have the advantage. On the other hand, she had been at this for years while I had only been training for two months so she definitely had more endurance than me. I ducked under her punch and retaliated with a hook to the jaw. It connected and she smirked. And then she aimed a jab at my head. We were too close for my Aura to deflect it, and I screwed my eyes shut and covered my arms with my face in anticipation of the blow.

I felt an upwelling of power then and there, like a surge of energy traveling from my chest and into my arms, and then into the air. I felt static wash over my skin and a sensation of something being drawn from my chest. I opened my eyes.

Calla was frozen elbow deep in a shimmering display of light. Her arm had been truncated from the elbow down, and the missing parts stuck out of another light show a little bit behind my head. Everyone looked on with wide eyes. I blinked.

"You should probably get your arm out of that before it closes." I said.

She winced at the image I had probably given her and withdrew her arm. "Right." Her arm thankfully came out intact.

"So, were those glyphs?" She stepped back and flexed her arms. I noticed the rippling muscle and decided that I really didn't want to get hit.

"I guess so. I don't know?"

She charged once more, though more carefully than before and I ducked and leaned away from her punches with relative ease. Though I was able to strike back, it didn't seem to do much to her when they connected. I'd have to end it decisively or else I would end up in the sand again. She turned around and lashed out at me faster than I could react while I scrambled to get some space. She didn't let up though and electricity arced around her hands, and I blacked out as her fist smashed into my forehead.

I woke up on the sand dizzy and miserable as heads crowded my vision. My forehead throbbed painfully and I think my nose had been bleeding, because my lips were sticky and tasted like copper. I felt like I wanted to puke. Everything shifted in and out of focus.

"Oh Dust…" I heard Calla say, her face loomed in my vision. "Are you alright?"

I groaned painfully and screwed my eyes shut again. "Not really…"

I heard her apologize.

I blacked out again.


	7. Chapter 7

I woke up.

I was angry. I knew why. I hurt. Everything hurt.

And then I was sad. I didn't know why. Everything still hurt. I ran past the girls. I think I was still bleeding.

Suddenly, I was happy. And then melancholy. Everything reminded me so much of Earth.

I had made it to the apartment. I was numb. My face in the mirror was streaked with tears and blood dripped down my chin.

I was angry again. I broke the mirror. I smashed everything in the bathroom. The door gave way under my fist. I curled up on the floor. I felt someone's arms around me and I wanted to punch them. But then I was sad again and I cried.

* * *

"I don't know what happened." I didn't want to talk, but I forced myself to. "I was sparring and I got hit, then I blacked out. That's all I know."

It wasn't a tearduct-emptying sadness anymore. It felt more like a pressure that existed within my skull and weighed me down as I proceeded through life. It was a feeling I was familiar with. Eventually, I would snap and run away from life once more. I felt my aura flicker and warp. Winter let go of me and I curled up on the bed. She looked angry. Very angry.

"I'll be right back, okay?" She squeezed me a bit, then stood up and slammed the door as she walked out.

It was silent for a few minutes, then I could hear her yelling through the door. I couldn't make the words out. I forced myself to sleep.

I felt motion. I was being moved somewhere. I slept

I woke up to a steady beeping. I was in a hospital bed. My torso was bandaged, and so was my head. I'd found out when I tried to rub my forehead. Doctor Braun was standing off to the side. He had a kind, fatherly face. We talked a lot whenever he came to check up on my head. He said it was healing. He had a wife and a young son who wanted to become a Hunter when he grew up and always talked about how daddy was going to help save the world with his inventions. I was numb again. I felt like I should feel something, that I should be happy a friend was here, but it was as if my emotions were locked behind a dam that was ready to overflow.

"He is awake now, Sir, Ma'am." He nodded to the doorway. "You have ten minutes."

Eisen and Winter were there. Both of them looked concerned, Winter even more so. Dr. Braun left to give us privacy.

"I apolo-" Eisen's mouth snapped shut as Winter rushed over, babbling apologies.

"What for?" I asked them.

"We should have told you earlier…" Winter was shamefaced. She explained how they saw me when I got here, and that I was in a bad condition. Eisen had decided to field test some cybernetics developed from their joint Synthetic development program with the Atlesian military. The logic was that since I had no records, they could just dump the body if it went wrong. Cold and efficient.

I didn't go wrong until today and things and the relationship between us was different. I saw the guilt in Winter's face plain as day, and Eisen was silhouetted in the window as he gazed at Atlas.

My fists clenched and I wanted to push Winter away, but that drained right out of me. The past was in the past, and it answered a few questions I had about myself. I would have done the same thing if the world rested on my shoulders. Still, it annoyed me a bit that they didn't let me know about this earlier.

"Your cybernetics malfunctioned due to the electrical feedback." Eisen broke it to me. "Dr. Braun and his team have shut them down in the interim. It is up to you if you want them replaced with improved models, or removed entirely."

I was glad that I'd been given the choice.

"I'll think about it."

He nodded, and they left. Dr. Braun came in holding a clipboard and he ran me through a few tests as he jotted down notes in a document marked EXCISE.

It all boiled down to pragmatism in the end. I went under the knife once again and woke up with a few more bandages. I'd be out of bed in a couple of days, and discharged by the end of the week. I took comfort and amusement in the fact that such a life-changing surgery would take at least a months of recuperation on Earth.

I read through legal documents, and then signed them when I was fully aware of the implications. And then came the list of parts they were going to take out of me and replace. I'd get my aura back and that was it.

I flipped through TV channels, my way of killing time after the surgery. The news was sad and frustrating. The White Fang had raided a village on the outskirts of Mistral. People were up in arms about it, some defended them, others wanted to retaliate. A Grimm-worshipping cult had drunk the Kool-Aid. Some actress had gotten pregnant. At least the soap operas were better by virtue of having entertaining fight scenes.

I was not in tears when Selene Belle declared her love for John Seaward and not Sam Beech. I honestly hadn't expected myself to react that way, but I did and it was fun to rage.

Eventually, I had enough of the melodrama (for now) and flipped through their channels once more. I think I had stumbled upon their equivalent of The Discovery Channel. This documentary about the different 'flavors' of weapons I was now watching was really entertaining and somewhat informative. I wondered if there was an equivalent to the Mythbusters somewhere.

That documentary sparked a lot of questions and ideas however, and I swiveled over the table my laptop was sitting on so I could type. I wasn't very good at melee combat. The circumstances of my arrival on his hospital bed was a testament to that. And quite frankly, I didn't want to get messed up again. On the other hand, I'd gotten remarks that I was a good shot even at long ranges. I figured I could work with that and an idea began to form as I worked out an experiment in my thoughts as I massaged my forehead.

I needed something that would allow me to precisely attack an opponent from far away, but since opponents moved very quickly, I also needed something that could function at medium-to-close ranges and as a melee weapon to buy the time and distance I needed to get back to sniping.

A sniper rifle immediately came to mind. It could provided a decent framework for transformation into other types of weapons. Say, a longsword. But what about in between? A carbine perhaps? I would have to deal with the lack of ammunition, but I figure I could carry a bunch of 20 round .50 BMG equivalent magazines. Nevermind the fact that I actually needed to make a working weapon first.

I took my fingers off my keyboard and erased the string of letters I had made while thinking, then typed down my list of requirements and roadmap to making my own weapon. It would probably be a blend of store-bought and specifically-designed parts that I would need help making. I looked forward to using it on the range. Being forced to use it against people however? Not so. I would shoot attackers if I really had to, but I promised myself that I would exercise restraint.

I spent some time sketching out its appearance in Inkscape as I ate dinner and I think it looked pretty good. I used the Barrett rifles for reference, though its main body was larger and flowed into the stock to accommodate the transformation mechanisms and the barrel was shrouded by what would be the longsword's blades. That way if push came to shove, I could thrust and stab with the gun. Meanwhile, the sniper rifle's bipod would merge into a handgrip for when it became a carbine, and would also form the longsword's crossguard. I was at a loss for everything else. I was only a concept artist, not an engineer.

Pretty good effort, I suppose.

* * *

I spent the next few days writing and tossing ideas at Winter when she came to visit with a box of pizza, and she helped me refine the design of the a bit. We slimmed the main body down a bit and she gave me some ideas for recoil management and loading. She liked the free-floating barrel idea, and I made a new document with a bullpup version of the gun but she was on the fence on that matter. She also pointed out that I should get it working first before I went ahead with other special features.

"True." I said over a slice of pepperoni, mushroom, and onions pizza. "So how's your day been?"

"Tiring." She sighed. "I've got a lot of work, but I thought I could drop by for lunch."

"Well, I'll be joining you soon." I patted her shoulder. "I've got to reply to those angry letters and do research too, you know."

Research in my case, often ended up delving into some of the seedier areas of Atlas to see what things were like for people there. I'd been on school-mandated outreach programs before, but actually immersing myself in the situation for a whole day was a whole lot different. Even a Lien could mean the difference between dinner and starvation for them. Those trips led to nights digging in the paperwork while trying not to leave a trail, and then organizing charity events as Eisen worked from the top-down.

The angry letters were prompted by the fact that I was now writing opinion pieces on local newspapers and submitting essays to various literary journals. It was safe to say that I wasn't very popular among some types of people. I decided to ramp up my training and fast track my weapon the moment I got out of the hospital.

She stared at the ceiling. "I wish I could be like my sister and her friends. They just fight people to fix things."

"We're fighting, aren't we?"

"I mean, with blades and bullets." She gestured with her hands. "One, two, punch! Bam! Bad guy's in jail and the day is saved! But…"

"It's only a stopgap." We both knew it.

We'd gone through a couple more slices in silence, then Winter noticed the cartoon that had just come on TV.

"Oh!" She grinned. "I love this show!"

I watched it with her. I'd be out tomorrow, and then we would begin the training again.

* * *

I knocked aside Winter's rapier with my longsword and punched her across the cheek. Her head recoiled and she grinned at me as we parted and reset our stances.

"Getting better!" She cheered as she cracked her neck. "That actually hurt a bit."

I smiled. "Thanks."

"Now, that was just the appetizer. Sure you're ready for the main course?"

"I'd like to try."

"Alright then."

We fell silent as we circled each other for a bit, and then everything dissolved into a flurry of sword strikes as metal clashed against metal. She slashed at eye-level while I parried it away in a shower of sparks, and then thrust my own sword forward. She flowed around it and countered with a slash that I just barely had the time to deflect.

She kicked off the ground and then launched herself off a glyph in an attempt to land behind my back. I opened another glyph in front of her and set the exit point in a random direction. I watched her fly out of the portal and land in a crouch off to my left, unfazed by the sudden change.

"That was great!" She laughed.

I rushed forward and swung from my left side. She ducked under the blade and slipped between my legs and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. A a pair of glyphs manifested themselves behind and in front of me, and I saw Winter's arm sticking out of the one out front. I moved aside as I allowed her to withdraw her arm before collapsing the portals.

She leapt into my field of view. "So that's what you were talking about?"

"Yup." Our swords locked together as I parried a sideways slash with a downstroke and forced her rapier down and away.

"You're still too slow, though."

She moved, And then I was on my back, dizzy, and staring down the blade of a rapier.

"Woah."


	8. Chapter 8

"So, let me get this straight." Winter pointed her chopsticks at the screen as we ate on the couch. "Selene was dumb enough to fall for that bastard Seaward?"

"Yup." I slurped ramen. "And then Beech went to the Temple of Purgation to become a Purged Monk."

"That's stupid." She huffed. "Everyone knows that the Purged have to let go of all emotion."

"He's in a bad mood."

"It's just someone being dumb! Move on, Beech!"

"Well-" Winter's hand clapped over my mouth.

"Sirens." She glanced around. "Three blares, high frequency. That's Grimm. You should get to the training hall to meet up with your team."

"Alright." I stood up and stretched, then helped her to her feet. "See you later, I suppose."

She smiled. "Alright. Don't die."

"I'll try not to."

* * *

The training hall was packed full of people and their associated weapons. I knew many of them by face from the weekly drills we practiced against Grimm attacks, and quite a few were in uniform. And now we would be forming Volunteer Teams to put our training to the test. We would assist the soldiers in entrenching and securing the areas while Hunter teams blunted the Grimm attack and bought time for us to finish.

There was a quick, awkward reunion with the girls from the combat school and I had to make up a story to explain why I ran off. Twayblade reassured me, but Raven looked at me in silence and I felt a shiver run down my spine, like she had seen right through me. Huginn, her surname was.

Everybody in the hall had already been assigned to a team, which had happened last week. I was in the hospital then, so they merely stuck me with the few others who hadn't been able to make it. I'd been greeted by a girl with bright blonde hair, Delilah Samson. The other two were Twayblade and a young man from the all-boys combat school: Odhran Belmont.

The three apparently knew each other, judging by the way he and Delilah kissed while Twayblade rolled her eyes.

"That happen often?" I asked Tway.

"Every time."

"Damn."

"So, where's your weapon?" Tway looked around me. "Is it a pocketknife?"

I had considered bringing the bracers, but I wasn't very good with them. I was more proficient with rifles anyway.

"I'm still working on it."

"Huh." She gave me an odd look, and then shrugged. "Well, there's weapons over there."

I nodded and made my way to the armory, which drew a few odd looks. It was embarrassing, and I double-timed it. I came back to the other three a few minutes later with a sniper rifle slung behind my back and a longsword/pistol strapped to my hip. I'd also taken a vest to put ammunition and grenades in.

Twayblade looked at me with her chin cupped in her hand. "Hm. Needs fashion, but later."

I was about to argue when the hall's military liaison, a Lieutenant Colby called for the assembly to begin. We all organized into our teams and made our way outside. A convoy of armored cars was parked on the asphalt, and the avenue-as far as I could see-was clear of traffic.

"So, are we going to be debriefed or not?" I asked as we walked

"They do it on the way to wherever." Twayblade tapped the cars' hulls as she walked over. "Car 451. Ah, here!"

* * *

Our handler debriefed us from the car's shotgun seat as we barreled down a tunnel. Cars had pulled up on either side to allow us to pass. We would help fortify a town called Stahlmarsh roughly 30 kilometers from the city alongside three other VTs and the Valkyrie regiment from the Glory Dawn. A large horde of Grimm had been spotted nearby, and would most likely attack the town by twilight. We had to be prepared by then.

Delilah explained that the fortification required involved setting up firing points, trenches, mines and barbed wire, and command posts for the robots as she gestured to a map of Stahlmarch with a pen to lay out the defensive plan. She led us in a cheer for team Samba before we got down from the car.

Making the defenses was hard, backbreaking work but we all pitched in. I had volunteered the use of my portals to move materials while the other three dug and moved in shifts. Because I hadn't yet figured out how to place glyphs beyond melee range, setting up a network involved walking from place to place, and I quickly found out that the strain of holding the portals open depended on the range between two points and the mass that was being moved. I had drunk at least a liter of Schneenergy (I was going going to talk to them about this some day) by 2:00 PM, and was bleeding from the nose by 4.

However, we were the first team to complete our section of the fortification and we'd gotten some commendations from the commander for smart thinking and great effort as the Valkyries set up shop. Meanwhile, the four of us had decided to camp atop one of the command posts. I set up my rifle so that it faced the treeline while I rested.

"So, why are we here anyway?" I asked Delilah.

"Well, we're here as a last resort in case the Grimm get past the Huntsmen." She said, taking a sip from Tway's canteen. "It'll be fine like, nobody dies anyway. Want some?" She offered the canteen.

I looked at Tway and she shrugged, then nodded. I took a sip. It was ginger tea. Refreshing. "'s good."

We watched the sun go down as the thunder and rumble of explosions in the distance grew ever closer. A deathstalker sailed out from the treetops and dug a trench into the ground past the barbed wire and mines, then tumbled into the river and never surfaced. The air was teeming with energy and the lack of it. I suddenly understood how they said that the Grimm have no souls as a tidal wave of black and white surged out from the treetops. Auras flickered on and my teammates readied their weapons.

Tway stepped off the roof as her cane transformed into a pike, which she used to lower herself to the ground. Delilah brandished her twinned falcatas, and Odhran his claymore. It shifted into a machine gun in his hands while Delilah's became shotguns. I racked a round into the chamber.

I had forgotten just how scary combat could be. My palms were sweaty under my gloves. The Huntsmen carved through the advancing front, but it seemed like they were too few to make a large difference.

"Who are we?" A harsh voice rose over the din.

"The Valkyries of Atlas!" The reply rippled down the lines and trenches.

"What are we?"

"We are the sword and shield!"

"What do we do?"

"We fight for others who cannot!"

A Boarbatusk squealed as it tangled in the barbed wire. I centered my sights and shot the thing. Beowolves leapt into the air and landed among the mines. The machine guns opened fire among the explosions. It was chaos. I forced my hands to stop shaking. I fired with my left hand despite the right-handedness of the rifle. It allowed me to keep my finger near the trigger when I cycled the chamber.

The Paladin-290s lumbered forward, launching barrages of missiles and autocannon fire into the horde while the spider-like Lancer-245s hung back and pounded the larger Grimm from long range. Combined fire from three of them tore an Ursa in half as a Paladin wrestled with a Deathstalker and punched it into mulch.

I was halfway through my second magazine, and I took the head off a Beowolf as it tried to leap into a machine gun emplacement. The ammunition loader lifted a thumb's up at me and I nodded. I continued shooting. Every shot found its mark.

"Now!" Delilah waved Tway and Odhran forward as pack of Beowolves closed in on a squad of troops retreating from the first line. I managed to pick some of them off before they made shooting impossible.

Odhran caught their attention and made a gesture. The soldiers ducked and he fired over their heads, stumbling the Grimm hot on their feet as the two girls almost danced into battle. Delilah's hair whipped around as she spun and kicked, blinding her targets as she slashed them apart with her blades. Twayblade's polearm constantly changed length and she used it to block and parry claw slashes before ending them with a precise thrust.

I had just centered my crosshairs on a Beowolf that was about to bite down on Delilah's head when her hair came alive and wrapped around its head. She grinned and flipped it onto Tway's spear as Odhran charged their Alpha and cut it in half with one swing. The sonic boom ripped through the battlefield and stumbled the Grimm closest to them. And I felt very inadequate as they fought.

The Beowolves were closing in despite the efforts of my teammates and I was running out of ammunition. I checked the transparent side of the loaded magazine. I only had one shot left, and there were way too many targets.

I looked around to see if I could get help. Soldiers and volunteers everywhere were locked in melee, and there was no help forthcoming. It was hopeless.

No. There had to be another way.

Warmth flowed from deep within my chest and through my arms into the rifle as the Dust folded into its metal reacted with my energies. Lines carved into the barrel began to glow, and acting upon a hunch, I fired at the ground in front of the retreating soldiers. I felt the round traveling through the air, almost saw it in slow-motion. And then the round kicked up a puff of dirt, but more importantly, I felt a connection in my head. The same kind I felt when I opened one half of a portal.

"Go!" I screamed, gesturing to the portal on the ground as I opened the other end beside me.

The Valkyries took the hint and rushed through, falling in a heap on the roof. My teammates nodded to each other and rushed through as well, though they landed far more gracefully. I closed the portal around a Beowolf's neck on accident and the severed head rolled off somewhere.

One of the Valkyries grabbed my hand and drew me into a half-hug. "Thanks, brother. We'd have been gone if it weren't for you."

I found a sandbag to sit on as they chattered around me, cracking open cases of supplies. My ears rang.

"I mean, wow!" Delilah pumped her fists in the air. "We were fighting left and right like holy shit, we're running out of space and there's too many. I'm out of ammo, and I'm getting tired."

"Then bam!" Tway punched me on the shoulder. "Deus ex machina right here! And that Valk, he called you brother, man! That's big respect!"

"Hey, hey." Odhran led them away. "Give him some space, girls. Can't be easy holding open portals all day. He's tired. Give him a few minutes before we get back to fighting. Deli, can you find some .50 cal for the two of us?"

"Sure thing, Odie!" Deli jumped off the CP and went somewhere as Odhran sat down beside me.

I took the can of soda he offered and started drinking.

"You alright there?"

"Yeah. Just a bit tired." I said. I meant it in more ways than one.

I could never completely fit in to Remnant, I realized. Fighting was a way of life for them. For me, it was a nightmare.

Somehow, the universe was intent on pushing me back into the nightmare.


End file.
